Tales from Dargo Island: The Complete Trilogy (30 page)

“Tell it again,
Daddy!” little Victor pleaded.

Joshua, king of
Rapatha Island, laughed. “Again?” he asked his five-year-old son. “I’ve already
told it a hundred times.”

“No you
haven’t.”

Joshua kissed
his son’s cheeks, causing the boy to squeal with delight. They sat on a hill
behind the palace, overlooking the coast. The sun was just setting.

“How about I
just tell you what happened to everyone after the island flew away?” he asked
Victor. “Grandma and Grandpa lived happily ever after and died at a very old
age. The Rapathians rebuilt the island and lived happily ever after. Everyone
was happy.”

“What about
Astrid?” the child asked.

“Well, she’s a
nature demon, now isn’t she? She continues to control the weather and live in
her palace in the sky. Her mother visited her often until she, too, passed away
at a very old age.”

“What about
Joffey?”

“What about
him?”

“Why didn’t
anyone see him on the little island?”

“Because he
wasn’t there.” Joshua kissed his son’s forehead. “Even though the other people
came back from the dead, Joffey didn’t. His father imagined him. Some say it
was the man’s conscience, trying to tell him to do the right thing, and that it
manifested itself as his son.”

“Neat!”

Joshua laughed.
He looked behind him and saw his wife approach from the palace. “Hello, Marla.”

“Hello,
Joshua.”

“Daddy?” Victor
called. “Did Josh join with Rapatha?”

“Of course he
did.”

“Where is he
now?”

“Some say he
joined the other nature demons in the nexus. Others say he’s still on the island.
No one really knows for sure.”

“What about
Rapatha? Can’t we visit her?”

“No. Her cavern
is closed to us now. But she tells us every now and then that she is well. Once
she joined with the Land of Constant Starlight, she became much happier. She
makes the flowers grow big and bright.”

“What about the
fairies?”

“They come out
every few years,” Marla said. “The last time was right before you were born.
They’ll come out this year, during the Snow Day. That’s when we wear blue masks
and dance and sing. It’s tradition.”

“Yay!” Victor
jumped up and down with the unceasing energy of children. Joshua and Marla
watched their son play.

“Tell it again,
Daddy. Please!”

Joshua sighed.
“All right. Just one more time.”

Victor sat
between his parents as they faced the setting sun. “There once was a boy named
Josh Debelko, who got caught in a tornado…”

I would be
lying if I said this trilogy was planned.
Dargo Island
was meant to be a
single novella, based on a dream I had in 2012. After I wrote
that
ending,
however, I knew I had to write another one. Having Josh turn into an old man
after failing to lift Astrid’s curse just seemed downright mean.

So I said,
“Just one more.”

Dargo’s Dark
Dream
, however, had an even crazier ending. I truly planned to end it
there, on a happy, if not strange, ending. But then I decided to write yet
another one. I even toyed with the idea of writing a lot more novellas. Each
one would put the characters in wacky situations (I thought about having a
Halloween-themed installment), but I’ve seen how long-running book series
degrade over the years as the authors run out of things to say, and I didn’t
want to end up like that. I figured, if I do write one more, it’s going to be
as final as it can get.

I threw
everything in there that I could think of. Nothing was planned beforehand
except the meteor. I thought, What would happen if the outside world became
aware of Dargo Island? The story snowballed from there.

It took months
to write
Rapatha
. For comparison sake, it only took me a month, each, to
write the first two novellas. I started the third one, but had trouble getting
past the “meteor crashes on the island” idea, so I took a break and wrote the
sci-fi novella
Palar
. Of course, that took only two weeks.

Then it was
back to
Rapatha
.

By then, I’d
forgotten what I’d written, and instead of re-reading it, I just started typing
again. After finishing, I read it from beginning to end and saw some plot
points I’d forgotten about. At some point, I mentioned Rapatha, the heart of
Dargo Island, being tethered to the planet’s core. So, if she died, Earth died
with her. The moment after I read that, I deleted it. I’m not sure what I was
thinking.

Overall, I’m
very happy with this trilogy of novellas. I started out with only a vague idea
of the story I wanted to tell in the first, but I knew I wanted each to tell a
complete story and stand on its own. None of these stories
had
to be
told, but I’m glad I did it anyway. Otherwise, why would I write at all?